For your reading enjoyment, a fresh batch of links from around the web! In this installment: building trust on distributed teams, maintaining balance at home when home IS work, and working remotely while camping across Europe.

When someone starts a call with: “So, how was everyone’s weekend?” really share something: “We had so much fun; my 5 year old daughter is playing T-ball and the girls were hilarious whacking at the ball and running around the bases.” We trust those who are willing to take the small risk of revealing something about themselves; encourage it, especially by role-modeling it.

How do people even go about managing others online? Look at your field and find out what tools are being used to help distributed teams stay well-managed. Is Basecamp being used to organize projects and keep people on deadlines? Is there a Google Apps component? What tech is being employed to facilitate teleconferences and online meetings?

This summer I spent six weeks touring france in a VW bug with my wife and six year old son, working from campsites as I went, to keep existing clients happy and to earn money to justify taking such a long trip. This was a bit of an experiment, to see if it was workable and sustainable. I’ve always talked about how nice it is that, in theory, as long as I have a laptop and an internet connection I could do my job from just about anywhere, so this was an opportunity to test out that theory.

When we work from home, we tend to move directly from the office to our beds, and then wonder why we can’t get to sleep. We skip over the normal wind-down process because the commute to our bed is only a few steps. I was having real problems with sleep a few months back. I would go to bed and my mind would be racing with all the things I had to do. Nothing I did could help me calm down. Then finally, my wise husband reminded me that I still needed that wind down time I’d had when I was working in an office.

After using Agile in IT projects for the past few years, and using Scrum exclusively on my last project, I wanted to read this book to get a better understanding of the theory of what I’d been following. This book gave me more. When reading the Preface I was excited to learn that the 3 authors used Scrum to write the book. In addition, as they lived in different places and in different time zones, they used some of the tools and strategies they describe in the book. Thus, the team of authors used distributed Scrum over a series of sprints to deliver the written product.

About the Author: Avdi Grimm

Avdi has been leading and participating in dispersed software development teams since 2007. He works from home in Southern Pennsylvania, and loves the fact that working remotely enables him to spend more time with his wife and five (soon to be six) children.